Reflections and stories on communication and community as The Flute Suite reaches the one year mark!

This is part two of my short series on practicing: How to help your students become more motivated to develop a personal practice. 

How to move from a 'telling' teaching style towards reflective questioning to develop awareness. The importance of being specific, lowering your expectations, and including movement, space, and awareness in lessons.

Reach out – you can find The Flute Suite on Instagram and Facebook, or me as Kathy Weidenfeller,flutist and at www.kathyweidenfeller.com

Would you like to help support The Flute Suite? Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/kathy25562

I invite you to reflect on your own personal practice: not so much What you practice - but How you think and talk about it. 3 Pillars of good practice: Cultivating Joyful Curiosity, including Movement and Novelty, and remembering the need for Space and Time.

Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:

• #music_360
• #violincase (Hillary Hahn)
• #justanotherflutist
• Sophie Dufeutrelle: The Flutist's Way, book III
• #AmyLikar

Reach out – you can find The Flute Suite on Instagram and Facebook, or me as Kathy Weidenfeller,flutist and at www.kathyweidenfeller.com

Would you like to help support The Flute Suite? Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/kathy25562

Really nice to be back after a longer than planned break!  A quick update and preview of up and coming episodes and other projects! Nice to be back and talking with all of you - I'd love to hear from you as well! @theflutesuite

www.kathyweidenfeller.com

If you enjoy The Flute Suite, would you consider buying me a coffee! It doesn't have to be much - helps keep the 'lights' on here! Thanks :) https://ko-fi.com/kathy25562

Reflections on this fall and the start of The Flute Suite as we reach the end of 2023! Thank YOU for listening!

Reach out – you can find The Flute Suite on Instagram and Facebook, or me as Kathy Weidenfeller,flutist and at www.kathyweidenfeller.com

Would you like to help support The Flute Suite? Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/kathy25562

And share The Flute Suite with a friend! Give us a rating where ever you listen.

Best wishes for 2024!!

Here is part two of the wonderful conversation I had with Jaana Laasonen, flute teacher at the East-Helsinki Music Institute and developer of the Colour Flute method of early-instrumental teaching.  2.10 Challenges in the Finnish instrumental education system

12.00 Our students are our best teachers

22.00 Solfege as a tool for musicianship and composition

27.00 The visual aspect of Kodaly

Jaana Laasonen is Lector of Flute at the East Helsinki Music Institute, and the creator of the ‘Colour Flute’ method, part of the 'Colourstrings' family: a method for beginning instrumentalists based on the theories and methods of Zoltan Kodaly. In this first part of our conversation, we talk about the importance of family and folk music in early instrumental education.

 You can find out more about the Colour Flute method here

2.25 Early musical experiences

9.51 Benefits of working with very young students

12.24 Connecting to Kodaly

22.34 Beginning with new flute students

Get a taste of the Young Flutist Festival (Nuori huilisti!) organized by the Finnish Flute Association in colaboration with the Juvenalia Music Institute in Espoo Finland.

I share clips of performances and behind the scenes comments from organizers and teachers. I hope you enjoy!!

@suomenhuiluseura

@nuorihuilisti

Here’s a conversation with the lovely Beatriz Machias: orchestral flutist, opera singer and founder of the Tampere Flute Festival here in Finland. In this episode, we talk about teaching, practicing, the possibilities that competition holds for young flutists – and especially being more than your flute!

·      1.41     How it all started!

·      6.15     Singing and flute playing

·      11.00   The Tampere Flute Festival

·      19.27   The importance of competitions and the upcoming Finnish Flute Association       competition

·      23.12   Practice and teaching

·      43.41   TFF 2024! 

For more information about Beatriz and the Tampere Flute Fest, follow:

@beatrizmaciasflutist 

@tampereflutefest

You can hear Dr. Pearson talk about the focal dystonia research I mention in Episode 7 of The Flute Suite starting at 15.40

In this episode, I sit down with Annika Gummerus-Putkinen, flutist, composer, writer and teacher at the Pop & Jazz conservatory in Helsinki. We got to have a  wonderful converstaion about the similarities and differences between our approaches to introducing our students to improvisation, and the important role improvisation can play in teaching, and in life in general!

 Annika is one of the co-authors of the book Free your Playing! A guide to Improvisation

You can find Annika on Facebook and Linked In

I mention David Doland in this episode – check out his fantastic work on classical improvisation on his website

I also want to shout out to Sophie Dufeutrelle and thank her for an interesting conversation we had several years ago on the history of music education in France that has helped me to put the role of improvisation in Western art music into context. Some of those ideas come up in this conversation.

You can follow the Flute Suite on Instagram  and Facebook